Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, 13th richest man on earth

Sergey Brin, born August 21, 1973, is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. Together with Larry Page, he co-founded Google. Brin is the President of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. As of June 2018, Brin is the 13th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$52.1 billion.

Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin’s data mining system to build a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

The Economist referred to Brin as an “Enlightenment Man”, and as someone who believes that “knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance”, a philosophy that is summed up by Google’s mission statement, “Organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and its unofficial yet sometimes controversial motto, “Don’t be evil.”

Early life and education

Brin was born in Moscow in the Soviet Union, to Russian Jewish parents, Yevgenia and Mikhail Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University (MSU). His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Brin family lived in a three-room apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey’s paternal grandmother. In “The Story of Sergey Brin”, Brin told Mark Malseed of Moment magazine, “I’ve known for a long time that my father wasn’t able to pursue the career he wanted”, but Brin only picked up the details years later after they had settled in the United States.

In 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, Mikhail Brin announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. “We cannot stay here any more”, he told his wife and mother. At the conference, he was able to “mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany and discovered that his intellectual brethren in the West were not ‘monsters.’” He added, “I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave.”

Sergey’s mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, “For Genia, the decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was thinking as much about his own future as his son’s, for her, ‘it was 80/20’ about Sergey.” They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result, his father was “promptly fired”. For related reasons, his mother had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.

At an interview in October 2000, Brin said, “I know the hard times that my parents went through there and I am very thankful that I was brought to the States. In 2017, Brin later recalled, “I came here to the US at age six with my family from the Soviet Union, which was at that time the greatest enemy the US had… It was a dire period, the cold war, as some people remember it. It was under the threat of nuclear annihilation. And even then the US had the courage to take me and my family in as refugees.”

In the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange programme to the Soviet Union. His roommate on the trip was future Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor John Stamper. As Brin recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority and he remembered that “his first impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car”. Malseed adds, “On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanatorium in the countryside near Moscow, Brin took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.

Brin attended elementary school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, encouraged him to learn mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. He attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Greenbelt, Maryland. In September 1990, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland, where he received his Bachelor of Science from the Department of Computer Science in 1993 with honours in computer science and mathematics at the age of 19, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Brin began his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, the developers of Mathematica. As of 2008, he was on leave from his PhD studies at Stanford.

Google’s private airport

Google rapidly evolved from a small startup to being a mainstream verb. With their rise to a net worth of over $20 billion each, the need for a corporate air department arose. Their first acquisition became a Boeing 767-200 from Qantas in 2005 through their holding company, Blue City Holdings, an entity that belongs to the founders directly and not Google.

Originally built in 1987 as a commercial airliner for the Australian carrier, the plane was purchased by the founders for $15 million. The pair then spent another $10 million converting the aircraft into an actual private jet. Whilst an impressive sum, the transaction was a great deal for the holding, with the cost of construction of a new Boeing Business Jet starting at near $200 million.

According to local publications, the converted Boeing had two staterooms, a shower, a dining area, 15 first-class seats and a lounging area. With the capacity to carry a total of 50 passengers as per FAA regulations, the aircraft has since been spotted all around the world.

Looking to use their time in the most efficient way, the Google co-founders struck a deal with NASA to house its private jet, a Moffett Airfield, a facility located just a few km from Google headquarters. Under these terms, the founders paid $1.3 million annually to NASA plus extra fees for parking, fuels and utilities as well as a separate lease for one of its hangars.

Famous for its iconic hangar one, a facility that once housed a dirigible and was built in the 1930s by the US, Moffet Field acted as a hub for the private jet fleet of the Google co-founders for several years under the NASA deal. In 2014, another one of the founders’ holding companies took over operations of the airfield, in a deal that saw them spend over $200 million as an investment into the site, reducing NASA’s involvement.

“As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth.” then said Charles Bolden, NASA’s Administrator. The facility and Hangar One, over time, are now set to be active research and learning hubs operated by Planetary Ventures, a real estate holding operated by Google.

By that point, the private jet fleet of Google’s co-founders and its CEO, Erik Schmidt had grown far larger than their first retrofitted Boeing. By 2011, the trio had at least eight private jets under their joined holding, all of which were housed at Moffet Field. The first two additions to the informal Google fleet were a pair of Gulfstream V jets.

By the end of 2007, their holding purchased a second Boeing Business Jet, this time a 757 model. In 2008, they bought a Dornier Alpha fighter jet according to the New York Times. Although unconfirmed, the remaining three aircrafts owned by Google’s founders, are believed to be smaller private jets, used for regional travel.

In 2013, shortly prior to taking over the Moffet Field facility and aiming to transform it into a facility for knowledge and research, Google’s co-founders embarked on an even more ambitious plan for their private fleet, a private airport. The occasion arose when San Jose’s airport was looking to release a 29-acre facility on its airstrip previously owned by Atlantic Aviation.

Moving in on the deal, Blue City Holdings, the company operating the private fleet of Google’s co-founders, brought in Signature Flight Support to operate the business jet terminal, into the construction of which it invested near $82 million, in addition to a lease agreement of $3 million per year over 50 years with the city of San Jose. Aiming to use it for its own executives, the private terminal is also made available to other business jets that land in San Jose’s airport.

According to statements released by the city, the deal will see the creation of 370 jobs as well as near $300,000 in tax per year, in addition to the annual lease cost. Benefits for Google’s founders are also clear, whereas most Fortune 100 executives operate a corporate air department in some fashion, operating your own airport near your base of operation is a luxury that few billionaires around the world can ever get, regardless of the cost.

Featuring hangar space in addition to the private jet terminal, the new location at San Jose’s airport is set to become the new hub of operations for Google’s private jet fleet. One of the largest, single-client corporate air facilities in the world, Google’s private terminal will be sitting next to a hangar operated by Hewlett Packard’s corporate fleet.

Whilst Google’s initial ownership of a private Boeing caused an uproar in the mainstream press in 2007, the company’s stellar performance under the leadership of its founders made sure a private airport, let alone a corporate fleet, didn’t raise any eyebrows. General Electric, on the other hand, had to switch CEOs following bad performance and issues with the management of their corporate fleet.

Founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 as a search engine based on measuring inbound links, Google became one of the fastest growing companies in the world. After failing to sell to Google for $1 million, the pair built out the company to a market cap of $750 billion.

Brin lavishes $49m on a mansion

In 2015, nypost.com reported that billionaire Sergey Brin checked out a sprawling, 30,000-square-foot mansion in Alpine, NJ, that costs a cool $48.88 million.

The 42-room new-build home — located at 18 Frick Drive, just eight miles from the city in one of the nation’s priciest ZIP codes — would be quite the get. The 12-bedroom, 19-bathroom spread boasts an indoor basketball court, fitness centre and a pool.

And it’s no surprise that the spacious square footage is also very conducive to entertaining. The pad also comes with a 4,000-bottle wine cellar, movie theatre, ballroom, formal dining room, dining terrace and three bars.

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